


Taught by Thirst

by KnightOfRage



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Depression, Family, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Series, romance is pretty minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2242368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightOfRage/pseuds/KnightOfRage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The paths they take are different, but they reach the water all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rin

**Author's Note:**

> First up: Rin and all of his angst.

_Water is taught by thirst;_   
_Land, by the oceans passed;_   
_Transport, by throe;_   
_Peace, by its battles told;_   
_Love, by memorial mould;_   
_Birds, by the snow._

_-Emily Dickinson_

 

Matsuoka Rin comes back to Japan every year for New Years.

This time he’s a few inches taller, a few pounds heavier and no better at swimming. He's stopped, he's stalled, he's hit a wall. He doesn't know what to do. He's got his fathers dream that he wants to fulfill, that he needs to fulfill.

Rin is made up of disjointed parts; a boy held together by nothing but tightly stretched skin and a bottomless sort of need. He stares in the mirror sometimes, staring at his face until it’s unfamiliar. Are those eyes his? Is that really his skin? Does he really looks so sad?

He doesn't look like this father. The only things he inherits from his father are a dream and depression that threatens to drown him. He doesn't find out about the latter until after his father dies.

From his mother he gets pointed teeth, bright eyes and hair and the constant need to be in physical contact with others. He gets over that eventually, or at least buries it so deep that no one can see it.

He’s walking back home, swaddled in coats and scarves, when he sees Nanase Haruka for the first time in years. Haru. The only person who he ever really competed with. The only person who was ever really good enough to challenge him.

Haru was a pretty child, the sort with eyes that were too big and too blue for his face and pale skin that refused to darken despite summers spent in the sun. Combined with his delicate cheekbones and straight, black hair, Haru always seemed too pretty to be real.

He's even prettier now, all baby fat gone from his face, mouth flat and unsmiling. Rin always thought that maybe he exaggerated Haruka in his memories, made him more beautiful than he really was. He can see now that his memories didn't lie.

Rin is young enough that his conclusions about Haru’s attractiveness don’t really matter. They hardly even register. Haru’s looks aren’t what’s important. His ability to swim is. Haru can become one with the water. He’s never trained like Rin, has never tried like Rin, but Haru has something that Rin doesn’t.

Rin doesn’t like thinking about it. But since he’s stalled out in Australia, it’s been the only thing he can think about. Would Haru be able to do it? Would Haru be able to get faster, to get better? Would Haru be able to grasp his father’s dream?

They race. Rin loses.

He cries and looks up to see Haruka watching him from shocked eyes the color of the ocean in midsummer. Neither of the know what to say.

* * *

Years pass and Rin swims. He gets older and gets taller and determinedly does not think about Haru or his other friends from the swim club. He mostly stays away from the other swimmers. They speak in languages he doesn't know or in rapid-fire English that goes to fast for him to understand.

Rin focuses on swimming, tries to block out all the distractions. Sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn't.

When Rin is fourteen, the other boys at his school start to discover girls. They talk about it in the locker rooms, loud and raucous. After about a week of loud babbling about things Rin never even sort of thinks about, he has had enough. He is moody and huffy and the other boys give him an even wider berth than usual.

“Come on, mate.” Says Patrick from Sydney. “Isn’t there someone out there who you can’t stop thinking about?” Dark hair and eyes that seem too blue to be real flash in his minds eye.

Patrick gives up on him after a moment of silence and goes back to the other boys. Rin sits there for a minute before getting dressed and going quietly back to his room. He lies on the bed, closes his eyes and bites down on his tongue so hard that he tastes blood.

That night, Rin doesn't sleep. He doesn't think about Haru. He doesn't think about anything at all.

The next day, he throws himself into the gossip with a fervor that surprises everyone, Rin himself most of all.

* * *

 Jenna from America likes his hair and his eyes, says that they’re “awesome.” Rin still struggles to understand her when she starts talking quickly in an accent that sounds different than the Australian instructors. Sometimes she pops her gum and sometimes she laughs too loud.

But when he leans in to kiss her, she doesn’t pull away. Her mouth tastes like bubblegum. Rin doesn’t really know what to do with his lips or his teeth or his hands, but he does his best and they kiss a few more times over the next few weeks.

It ends abruptly when he accidentally bites down on her bottom lip and tears it open. It’s bad enough that she needs three stitches and a week off of swim practice. Rin is horrified and even when she tells him that it’s “really no big deal,” he vows never to kiss her, or anyone, ever again.

The thing about his teeth is that he can’t really help it. It’s from his mother’s side of the family. He’s known her razor-sharp smile for his whole life. He never realized it was weird until he noticed how other people reacted to it.

Gou didn’t inherit the gene, but he did. When he was growing up, it was just his canines that were sharp. Then he lost all of his baby teeth and got his grown-up, pointy shark teeth. They scare the other kids and sometimes if Rin’s not careful he’ll bite his own lips and taste blood.

Rin hates his teeth after hurting Jenna. He stops smiling and stops talking, if he can help it. He swims and he swims and he doesn’t think about girls and he doesn’t think about Haru or Makoto or Nagisa or Sosuke. Swimming is the only thing that matters.

* * *

 A year passes and not much changes.

Some of the other kids are having a party and he’s invited. He’s pretty sure that they only invite him to be polite, but he goes anyway. His dorm is lonely and the pool is closed after ten.

The party is loud and crowded and the furthest thing from the peace of the pool that Rin can imagine. He accepts a drink and splutters upon sipping it. He knows a few of the other students have been experimenting with alcohol, but he never thought they’d give him any.

Patrick from Sydney claps him on the back and says, “Live a little, Rin! It’s a party!”

That’s Rin’s last clear memory.

When he wakes up on the floor of his dorm in the morning, his mouth is dry and his head is pounding. He groans, flashes of the night before bursting in his mind like firework. He remembers devolving into rapid-fire Japanese around midnight, too drunk to keep the concentration for English. He remembers a girl. He remembers kissing her…

He closes his eyes tight and presses his fists against them, ashamed and disgusted. He did it again. He could have hurt her just like Jenna, who has a tiny scar on her lower lip that creases when she smiles.

Rin decides that he’s not going to practice today. He considers taking a bus to the airport and just _going_ _home_. He’s only got a few weeks left here, anyway. It’s not like it matters. He’s not getting any better and he’s so sick of it. Of swimming, of the other kids, of the language that he still struggles with sometimes. Of everything.

Rin lies on the floor and would probably cry if his head didn’t hurt so much. But he’s too tired and too hungover. He closes his eyes and with a tired sigh, he sleeps.

* * *

 The next day, Patrick finds him. The other boy grins at him and slaps him on the shoulder, babbling about the party. Rin nods when he’s supposed to and smiles without showing his teeth.

“Now then,” Patrick smiles slyly and Rin tenses. “Who’s Haruka?”

Rin freezes up and narrowly avoids biting through his lip. Rage boils up in him like lava seething from an active volcano.“What?” He asks, voice completely flat. He’s trying not to explode, but the grasp he has on his anger is tenuous at best.

“Uh,” Patrick looks nervous and unsure, like he’s missed a step on the stairs that he was sure was there. “The other night when you were messing around with Katya, you were babbling about some girl named Haruka…”

Katya from Moscow has dark hair and blue eyes. Rin’s anger slips away, replaced with shame and self-loathing. Rin’s memories from the party solidify a bit, becoming clear in the shape of a girl who looks a little bit like Nanase Haruka.

“I assumed she was, like, a girlfriend you had waiting at home or something.” Patrick shrugs, voice apologetic. “Did I get it wrong?”

Rin laughs, hollow and tired. He finds himself incredibly grateful that he was speaking in Japanese for most of the night so that none of the other swimmers heard anything else he might have said about Haruka. The fact that she is actually a he, for instance.

“It’s...complicated.” Is the best answer Rin can come up with. His relationship with Haru is something that he has never been able to fully explain to himself, let alone to others.

“I get it, mate.” Patrick grins and launches into a story about a liaison between himself and an attractive female swimmer from South America earlier that year. Rin lets him talk, grateful for the chance to distance himself from the turmoil in his own head.

* * *

 The next few weeks pass strangely for Rin. Some days are molasses while others are gone in no time at all. When he’s not in classes, he swims. He swims long and swims hard, swearing to himself that once this is over, he’s done. No more swimming. His dad’s dream will die just like his dad did. 

He goes online and makes ridiculously expensive long-distance calls and soon he’s enrolled Samezuka Academy. They have a swim team and it’s good, but Rin doesn’t plan on joining. The attraction for him comes in the form of dorms.

He doesn’t want to live at home again. He doesn’t even think he could. The idea of waking up to his mother’s cooking and his sister’s smile seems impossible. It’s as distant as the stars or Japan from his dorm room.

He doesn’t want anyone to take care of him. He just wants to be left alone.

* * *

 On the last day, most of the other swimmers ignore him. It’s fair. He’s done the same to most of them as well.

But Jenna comes up and hugs him. She tells him to keep in touch like he hasn’t been avoiding her or that he didn’t give her a permanent facial scar. She can’t mean it, so he just chalks it up to cultural difference, strange politeness or some prank he doesn’t understand.

He hugs her back anyway. She’s warm in his arms. 

Patrick comes up next. He puts his number in Rin’s mobile without permission and claps him on the shoulder. Rin shoves him back and things devolve into a shoving war from there. It takes three warnings from a coach to make them stop.

Rin wants to thank Patrick for dealing with him, for trying to be Rin’s friend even when it was so difficult. But he doesn’t have the words so he just settles for a high-five.

“I’ll see you in Rio!” Patrick grins. “At the Olympics, Rin!”

Rin doesn’t have the heart to ruin the moment by telling Patrick he’s quitting. So he just nods and says, “Hell yes.”

The ride to the airport is loud, full of rowdy kids babbling in different languages. Rin sits in the back of the bus listening to his music, quiet and full of anticipation. It doesn’t seem real as he makes his way through the airport. Ticket, check. Luggage, check. Security, check. Everything goes smoothly even though the security guard gives Rin’s teeth a funny look.

Rin sits near his gate and takes deep breaths through his mouth. Home, home, home. He’s going home.

The takeoff is bumpy and the flight is long. Rin tries to sleep and can’t, so he sits and watches the ocean roll by under the plane. It’s midday. The water gleams blue and deep. Rin breathes and closes his eyes.

* * *

 He takes a taxi back to his house. He should have called, told his mother that he’d be home, but he didn’t. It would have made it all real, the leaving and the coming back.

Rin stands outside the house, his luggage in his hands. It seems smaller, somehow. Or maybe he’s just grown. He doesn’t go in for a few minutes, just stands and tries not to think. They’re going to see him, aren’t they? His mother and Gou...see who he’s turned into. See how he failed.

He calls the taxi back. Samezuka Academy is open for early move-in already. Might as well drop his stuff off there while he has the chance. No need to unpack everything at home and then repack in a few days.

That evening, he sits in his new dorm and folds his t-shirts. The lies are so practiced by now, so smooth and precise, that he almost believes them himself.

* * *

 It takes him three days to gather up enough courage to go and see his family.

He stands in the doorway, feet shuffling and shoulders hunched, as he waits for his mother or Gou to answer the door. The salt-tinged breezes that constantly drift through Iwatobi make him feel ill as he waits.

His mother answers. She’s exactly like he remembered her, except in the ways that she’s not. It’s been less than a year since he was home for New Years, but there seems to be an inordinate amount of grey streaking her scarlet hair now and too many new laugh lines pulling at the corners of her eyes.

But when she gathers him up into her arms and hugs him, it feels exactly the same.

Gou trots into the entryway. “Mom, who was at the…” She freezes when she sees him, a delighted squeal escaping her. She is bright and beautiful. The sight of her makes Rin want to close his eyes.

When his mother and Gou finally stop hugging him, he is herded into the kitchen and pressed with tea and sweets. Rin has still barely spoken beyond a brief “hello” and some route compliments and comments on how the house has changed.

He is lucky that Gou and his mother both love to talk. They tell him all about what has been happening with the neighbors, Rin’s extended family and his old classmates. Gou mentions Haru and Makoto once and Rin hides his hands in his lap so he doesn’t have to explain why they’ve suddenly balled up into fists.

When they ask him questions about Australia or about his new school, Rin is as laconic as possible. He doesn’t know what to do with all of these reminders of how he was before Australia. He doesn’t know what he hates more; the evidence of how he’s changed or that of how he hasn’t.

It is hours of talking and tea and forced, brittle smiles before Rin is allowed to flee to his old room. Between his mother’s familiar sharktoothed smile and Gou’s happy tears, Rin feels kind of like he’s drowning.

He waits until they’re asleep before fleeing.

The nighttime streets of Iwatobi are nothing like nighttime in Australia. Rin jams his hands in his pockets. When he was there, the streets seemed too loud. Now that he’s here, the streets are too quiet. Rin sighs and tilts his head back, looking up at the stars.

His dream is over and now he has no idea what he’s supposed to do.

* * *

 Gou texts him a few days after classes start, letting him know that they’re tearing down his old swim club. Rin isn’t sure what he wants to do with the information.

He thinks about Haruka and Makoto and Nagisa. He doesn’t care about them anymore, he really, really doesn’t. But that swim club was his dream for so long, just like it was his father’s dream. He figures that it can’t hurt to just say goodbye.

The train ride there is long and boring. He watches the dark streets outside roll by, remembering days spent jogging to and from the club. He thought about doing that tonight, but Samezuka is far enough away that jogging there and back would be a pain.

Besides, it doesn’t matter if he’s in good shape anymore. He’s quit swimming. No need to stay in shape anymore. No more watching what he eats, no more lifting weights, no more spending hours in the pool swimming back and forth and back and forth.

It’s a strange feeling. He does his best not to reflect on it.

When he reaches the center, it’s dark and empty. He wanders the halls a bit, not dwelling on memories exactly, but trying to capture the way he felt here before he left. It’s impossible. That boy, that version of him with the big mouth and the bigger dreams, is as strange and distant as the deepest depths of the ocean.

Why is he even here? It doesn’t make sense for him to think about this stuff anymore. His dream is done. Over. He failed. This is the end of the story.

Rin pulls his ballcap lower over his eyes and heads for the exit, berating himself for his own sentimentality. Coming back here was worthless; a waste of effort and a waste of time.

But then, he hears voices. They’re coming from near the lounge and for a middle he considers hiding. But they’re growing louder as he grows closer and there’s something familiar about them.

His teeth grit as he recognizes the bright cadence of the first as Nagisa, deepened and changed with age. What are they doing here? He doesn’t want to see them, he doesn’t care, he _doesn’t_ …

But his feet are already moving and he can tell by the way the talk has stopped that they’ve spotted him. Screw it. He jams his hands into his pockets and walks forward. He _doesn’t care..._

The hallway ends and there’s someone standing there. Rin catalogues familiar features, changed and refined with age. Dark hair, lean body, pale skin, eyes too blue to be real even in the dim light. Rin has no idea what he’s supposed to be feeling right now.

“Haruka.”


	2. Haruka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Haru and feelings!

Haruka's grandmother had many sayings. He would like to say he remembers all of them. He would, of course, be lying.

* * *

Haruka is sitting at the table and coloring. His pictures are all in blue. It’s his favorite color, the color of sky and water and his grandma’s eyes.

She is sitting across the table from him, cradling her tea and smiling. The skin on her face and hands is wrinkled and weathered, but her fingers are still nimble and her eyes are still bright. She pushes a red crayon towards him. “Why not try another color, Haru-chan?”

He frowns, still focused on his drawing. “I like blue.”

Her smile widens a bit. “Variety is the spice of life!” She tells him.

Haru sighs and takes the red crayon that she offered him. He makes a few of the fish red before going back to the blue.

“Little strokes fell great oaks.” She says and Haru just colors, not asking her to clarify.

* * *

Makoto wants to join the swim club.

Haru doesn’t want to join the swim club.

“There’s no point without you, Haru-chan!” Makoto tells him. Haru doesn’t really know what to make of that.

He’s known Makoto since before he can remember. He never met Makoto; he was just _there_ like his parents and his grandma and the water. As far as Haru is concerned, there wasn’t a time before Makoto.

He sighs. No matter how much he’d try to deny it, he needs Makoto. At home, he has his parents and his grandmother, but at school Makoto is all he has. Makoto is all he needs and if he was gone…

Haru agrees even if he doesn’t really want to. But a swimming club means a pool and Haru likes pools, almost as much as he likes the ocean.

He goes home and tells his grandma. She hugs him and tells him that she’s proud.

That weekend, he and Makoto go to the beach.

Makoto and his parents stay on the shore, with Makoto pretending the water doesn’t scare him, and build sandcastles. Haruka floats through the sea, eyes half-closed. The salty air breezes past him, kicking up waves.

The water is alive, moving and pulsing like the breaths of some great animal. It isn’t wise to grow complacent around the sea. A certain amount of wariness is necessary, as well as respect.

Haru looks at Makoto on the shore, Makoto who is with him always, Makoto who fears the water.

Haru kicks his legs, once, twice, and dives beneath the waves. It is so different down here, blue and quiet and slightly cold.

On Monday, he and Makoto start at the swim club. On days like today he never wants to go back to shore.

* * *

Swim club isn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

Too many people talk to him and too many people try to touch him, but he gets to swim for hours at a time with minimal interruption. He grows to like the water in the pool, learns to let it flow around him and guide him to where he needs to go.

He spends hours sliding through the water, sometimes with Makoto but mostly by himself. He drifts alone, wrapped in silence and solitude. He enjoys it, the freedom to be one with the water and his thoughts.

But, as time goes on, people start paying attention to him. They call him amazing, which annoys him, or even a prodigy, which he doesn’t understand.He’s not a prodigy. All he’s doing is swimming.

The compliments are still on his mind one evening after swim club. He’s a little sweaty from the bike ride home, his hair sticking to his damp forehead. His grandmother ushers him inside and has him sit at the table while she grills him mackerel.

He tugs on the edges of his sleeves, annoyed at the world in general. Yellow, buttery light is pouring through the windows and turning the whole house gilded and golden. Haruka’s grandmother places a plate in front of him. He mumbles a quick thanks for the food before taking a bite. The fish is delicious as always, but not even mackerel can raise his spirits today.

“What’s wrong, Haru-chan?” His grandmother frowns at him, the sunlight making the wrinkles on her face look deep and craggy. “You’ve barely touched your fish.”

“I don’t want to go back to the swim club.” He mumbles, not looking at her. Her frown deepens and she reaches over to touch his arm. She is allowed to touch him. He welcomes her touch, unlike that of the swim club members that he doesn’t know.

“Did something happen?” She asks.

“They…” He feels foolish. “They keep calling me a prodigy.” He murmurs, eyes focused on the way the light catches on the water leaking from the sink faucet. It catches, glowing and refracted, for a moment before dropping down and disappearing from sight. It is fragile. Beautiful. Unique.

“There’s an old saying about prodigies.” She says kindly. He still watches the water dripping from the leaky faucet. “When you're ten, they call you prodigy. When you're fifteen, they call you a genius. Once you hit twenty, you're just an ordinary person.”

Haruka doesn’t really understand. Twenty? He has to wait until _twenty_ before people stop bothering him? Twenty is nearly an entire lifetime away. He looks back to his grandmother and she is smiling, sad and soft. He wants to ask her to clarify, to ask what that means. But he doesn’t. Her smile is so sad. He’s never seen her look like that before.

He goes back to his fish, taking a few more bites with more enthusiasm than before. “No one besides you gets to decide how you use your gifts, Haru-chan.” She says, voice quiet over the sounds of eating. “And they are such wonderful gifts.”

Haru doesn’t want gifts. He doesn’t want to be special. He wants to be ordinary. He doesn’t say anything, just takes another bite of his fish and swallows past the lump in his throat.

* * *

Today, there is a new boy at the swimming club.

He has red hair, red eyes and teeth that are just a little too sharp. He grins at Haruka for reasons he can't understand. Haru thinks if he had teeth like that, he wouldn't smile at all.

It hardly matters. Haru doesn't smile that much anyway.

Haru mostly ignores him, despite his loud hair and his even louder introduction. Makoto is excitedly chattering about how Matsuoka Rin has a girly name too, isn’t that funny, but Haru is already looking at the placid waters of the pool.

“Hey, Nanase!” Haruka is suddenly thrown off balance by the unfamilar weight of an arm on his shoulder. “I hear you’re the fastest one here!”

He turns to see the new kid, Matsuoka, leaning on him. A hush falls over the pool. Someone other than Makoto has dared to touch Nanase Haruka.

“Let’s race!” Masouka crows. Haru looks sidelong at the other boy. He is all lanky arms and legs and scarlet hair. Matsouka is annoying, but Haru wants to swim. He decides that he’ll get in the pool, but ignore him.

They get on the starting blocks and the other members of the club are either watching intently or milling around and pretending they aren’t interested. “Haru-chan…” Makoto murmurs, but Haru doesn’t look back. He glances at Matsouka. He is so annoying. Haru grits his teeth a little. He rarely feels things so intensely. It’s making him uncomfortable.

Someone yells, "Go!" and Haru _moves_. Rarely does he actually try for speed, but today is different. Matsuoka is annoying and he wants to beat him. The water feels different, almost like it can feel Matsuoka too and wants to help Haruka beat him. 

Haru pushes through the water, forcing himself faster and faster. He can feel Matsuoka beside him. 

He wants to _win_. 

He slams the wall first, his palm stinging, and a feeling that he's never felt before floods him. He's triumphant. He beat Matsuoka. He won and he's _excited_ about it. 

 

His heart is pounding and his hands are shaking. _What is this?_ He is frightened, staring over at Matsuoka and his shark-toothed grin.

“That was a pretty good race, Haru!” Haru doesn’t answer, just lets Makoto help him out of the pool and does his best to ignore the chattering of the swim club and Matsuoka in the background.

It is almost an hour later, on the bike ride home, when he realizes that Matsuoka called him Haru and not Nanase.

The next day, Masuoka decides to keep calling him Haru. Haru glares at him in annoyance the first time it happens. Matsouka raises his hands in a pacifying gesture before hitching a thumb to point at his chest. “You can call me Rin!”

Haru doesn’t want to call him Rin. He wants things to go back to the way they were before, before the races and before the _feelings_ and before Rin.

* * *

A few days later, Haruka’s grandmother sees his face drawn into a frown and makes him tea. They sit at the table together, shadows lengthening and casting an almost grim atmosphere over the room.

“There’s new boy at the swim club.” Haru begins.

“Oh?” His grandmother sips her tea and raises an eyebrow.

“I think he’s stupid.” Haru mumbles, peering down in his own tea. “And he keeps _bothering_ me.”

“There might be more to him than you know, Haru-chan.” His grandmother says, putting down her cup and touching his smooth hand with her weathered one. “Remember, ‘still waters run deep.’”

“What does that mean?” Haru asks, looking up at her. He likes it when her sayings are about water and about the ocean, but he doesn’t understand this one. Rin isn’t like the water at all. Rin is loud and _annoying_ and _dumb_.

“There is more to people than you might think.” She says, getting up and taking her teacup over to the sink.

Haru just shrugs. He doesn’t really think there is anything else to Rin, but his grandmother is usually right. He brings his cup over to her at the sink. She shoos him away and tells him to go play with Makoto.

Haru does. It's always been easier to swim with the tide than against it.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Matsuoka Rin continues to bother him.

He calls him Haru and he challenges him to races. And, for reasons Haru hardly understands, he agrees. Rin wins sometimes and Haru wins others, but always he feels something.

Haru can feel Makoto’s eyes on him when he races Rin. He knows that Makoto wants to ask why he wants to race now, wants to understand why it’s different with Rin. Haru doesn’t say anything because he _doesn’t know_.

It is easier to swim with the tide than against it.

But, for the first time ever, Haruka wants to try to fight it. To see if defying the current is even possible. Rin makes him feel like that. Haru doesn't know what that means.

* * *

“You look like you’re in a good mood today.” His grandmother observes one evening. “Was swimming club fun?”

“I won a race.” Haru tells her, flipping his hair out of his eyes.

“I didn’t know you enjoyed racing, Haru-chan.” She smiles at him, eyes twinkling.

Haru doesn’t answer. Does he enjoy it, swimming with Rin? The breath in his lungs feels sharp when he does, the water feels different, his body feels electric. _Enjoy_ probably isn’t the right word. But he’s growing worried about how increasingly desperate he’s becoming for the feeling. How increasingly dependant he’s become on Rin, in the water and out of it.

* * *

“Swim the relay with me!” Rin demands, again and again and again.

Haru stand firm, like the shore weathering the waves beating in from the sea. But Rin ignores him and his refusal. He pulls Haru behind him whether he likes it or not. Makoto comes too, all gentle smiles and willing enthusiasm.Then there’s Nagisa, a bolt of bright laughter and light that completes their group.

“Swim with me.” Rin demands of him, of all of them, and, somehow, they all follow him.

The day of the relay comes. Haru stands on his block and waits for Rin. Something in his chest tightens at the thought. Rin is leaving Japan. Rin is leaving the swim club. Rin is leaving him.

Will he still be here, waiting for Rin? How can he? How can he _not_?

But then Rin is hitting the wall and all other thoughts are gone beside one.

Swim. He has to swim. For the team, for Nagisa, for Makoto, for Rin. He swims and, for one perfect second, everything makes sense. There’s not one way for him to describe it. It feels like the space underneath the waves. It feels like the moment before the water drop hanging from the faucet falls. It feels like being free.

Haru gasps and swims harder than he ever has before and, when his palm slams into the wall, he sees a sight like nothing he’s ever seen before.

They win the relay. Rin throws an arm around Haru’s neck and the empty spaces in his chest feel hot and raw. There isn’t a name for this feeling, he doesn’t think. It’s too much, far too much, and Haru wants to scream or run or be far, far under the waves.

Rin is laughing.

 _How could you_ , Haru wants to tell him, _How could you make me feel like this._

Because he’s never felt anything like this before, not for anyone. Not for Makoto or for his parents or for Nagisa or for his grandmother. This feeling is purely Rin. He hates it. He wants it gone. He needs it. He _needs_...

And then, Rin leaves.

Haru slips back under the surface and lets the current take him where it may. The raw feelings inside of him fade and then disappear.

He goes back to placid and calm. It was easier like this. This was always easier.

Sometimes he wakes up with his hand stinging from the impact against the wall at the end of the relay.

He wonders about Rin. He wonder if he’s swimming, wonders what he looks like now, wonders if he’s forgotten all about them.

* * *

His grandmother grows ill that fall.

She stops making tea, stops grilling mackerel, stops gardening and starts sleeping long hours.

Haru spends most of his free time at her bedside. She insists he goes to swim club still and, because she insists, he does.

They spend the days reading or doing nothing at all, the quiet comfortable and warm. Haru learns to cook mackerel and make tea. He brings it to her and she smiles so wide when he does that he starts practicing cooking more often, determined to get better and see that smile every day.

They are sitting together, the day warm and clear, and Haruka makes them grilled mackerel and tea.

“Haru-chan.” She smiles at him over her tea, sincere despite the paleness of her cheeks. “Remember what I’ve told you.”

He nods and holds her hand. He doesn’t know what he is supposed to say.

That evening, they sit out in the garden and smell the sea air until she gets tired.

“After rain comes fair weather.” She tells him that night, kissing him on the brow. He likes when her sayings involve water.

“What does that mean?” He whispers, holding one of her limp, weathered hands in both of his.

She smiles. “It means I love you, my Haru-chan.”

She dies peacefully in her sleep that night.

Haru’s mother holds one of his hands during the funeral and Makoto holds the other. He knows that he should be too old for that sort of childish comfort, but the warmth of their fingers helps keep him together.

He doesn’t cry during the funeral. He stands together with his parents until the shadows grow long and deep. They go home to a house that is too quiet and too empty.

Haru goes to his room, curls into a ball and cries. The tears taste salty and bitter. The evening colors everything black and blue. Haru longs for the ocean, for the dark spaces under the waves and for the bitter chill that robs all feelings from his limbs.

* * *

Time passes. Haru keeps swimming and Makoto keeps swimming with him. He gets over his grandmother’s passing slowly, still thinking on her words and phrases and remembering blue eyes that twinkled when she laughed.

He takes to soaking in the tub when its too cold to swim in the pool or the ocean. The water is still and calm, but it is better than no water at all.

He’s out one rare day without Makoto, cold biting at him through his coat, and he sees something that shouldn’t be.

Red eyes, redder hair and sharp teeth.

Rin.

There is a lump in his throat and a raw, hot feeling in his chest. Rin is taller, his hair a bit longer and his teeth a bit sharper. Rin is _here_ and Haru can hear his pulse in his ears, like the waves crashing on the shore.

Haru speaks more than he usually does in an entire day, babbling like he’s Nagisa because maybe that will quell whatever this feeling rising in his chest is. It’s almost like the things he felt after they won the relay. But it’s different this time because there’s no Nagisa and no Makoto. It’s just him and Rin and there’s something about that adds a strange, almost dangerous edge.

“Hey Haru.” Rin looks at him, something fragile and unfamiliar in his expression. “Let’s race.”

They race. Haru wins.

Rin starts crying and Haru doesn’t know what to do.

He swallows past the lump in his throat and wants to run away from here and forget it ever happened because he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to win, not like this. He wants Rin back, the Rin who laughed when they raced and just grinned and shoved Haru when he lost.

Rin is still looking at him with wide, watery eyes and Haru had no idea what he should say.

* * *

 

He runs to the sea, to the safety of salt and sand and water. It’s too cold for him to be under the waves and he knows it, but he needs it, he _needs_ it, he _can’t_ …

He misses his grandmother so much. She would know what to say. She could help him fix this, fix Rin. But she’s dead.

So Haru takes off his shoes, takes off his socks and stand in the surf until he can’t feel his toes. He goes home and sits in the bath, curled up into as small of a ball as he can.

Rin, Rin, _Rin_ …

His eyes sting and his chest burns.

He’s quitting swimming.

It isn’t worth this.

Nothing is.

* * *

“I’m not swimming anymore.” Haru tells Makoto the next day.

Makoto does his best to figure out why, with gentle questions and frowns. Haru doesn’t budge, the feelings still frothing in his chest.

 _How dare you_ , he wants to scream, _how dare you do this to me._

He isn’t sure who he wants to yell at.

His grandmother once told him that after rain comes fair weather. The sky behind Haru is cold, crisp and blue. He is done with fair weather. He wants it to rain.

* * *

Nagisa lingers for a while longer after that, but soon they’re split up by age and school and life.

Haru doesn’t feel much after that.

He’s gotten used to people leaving him. He doesn’t so much as blink when his parents go too.

Days pass and sometimes he dreams of diving beneath the waves and never coming up again.

Everyone leaves, everyone except Makoto. Haruka can’t remember a time before Makoto. If Makoto left, he doesn’t know if there would be anything left of him at all.

But he doesn’t know why Makoto puts so much worry and care into Haru. He gives and gives and never gets anything back. Haru wishes there was something he could give back, but when he thinks about it he can never come up with anything.

Maybe it’s for the best.

The last time he really tried for someone else was back with Rin. He can still see the hurt, betrayed look on the other boy’s face. Haru still doesn’t know what he would say to Rin if he saw him, but he wants to see him so bad. He wants to say something. He doesn’t want his last memory of Rin to be one of the tears in the other boy’s eyes.

But there’s nothing he can do to change it, no way to take back that race. Haru spends his days in self-enforced solitude and his nights in silence. He soaks in the bath, misses the pool and longs for the ocean.

He tries to forget the past and avoids thinking about the future.

This house is too big and too empty. This bath is too small and too calm.

His grandmother once said that when you're ten, they call you prodigy. When you're fifteen, they call you a genius. Once you hit twenty, you're just an ordinary person. Out of all of her sayings, that is the one that has stayed with him.

He doesn’t know why.

Haru closes his eyes and slips back under the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'd just like to say that I haven't watched the first season in a while, so any discrepancies with canon in this section are all me.

**Author's Note:**

> So, there's that. I plan on doing a chapter for all of our boys. Should take two weeks or so before the next update...I can't be sure. I am a Super Busy college student with Super Important Adult Responsibilities. Which I will probably ignore to write fic. So...probably within the next two weeks.


End file.
